by James Swain
“He could have learned that anywhere,” she said skeptically.
“I disagree,” he said. “I was a SEAL and also a cop for fifteen years, and I took my share of driving courses. I don’t remember any time devoted to driving in reverse. The only other person I’ve ever seen do this was you.”
“You think there’s a connection,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s flimsy. What else have you got?”
He pointed at the second line on the page where he’d written TIMING OF FIRST KILLING/APPEARANCE OF PHOTOS. “Two weeks after you were promoted to run the Violent Crimes Against Children/Online Predator unit, the first envelope of photographs was sent to the FBI and given to you. That’s when the investigation officially began. Correct?”
She nodded. “And I’ve been chasing them ever since.”
“You also told me that profilers at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Division believe the photographs are payback because you escaped from the killers at Dartmouth.”
“Right again. What’s the significance?”
“Think about the timing of the first photographs. They appeared two weeks after your promotion. During those two weeks, the killers abducted a victim, kept her in a house, killed her, photographed her body, then dropped the film off at Walgreens to be developed. An employee developed the film, saw it was a murder, and contacted the police, who in turn sent the photos to the FBI. Each one of these things took a few days. If you back them up, it appears the first victim was abducted right after you were promoted. Call it the first payback.”
She spent a moment processing what he was saying. Then it hit her.
“The killers knew I’d been promoted.”
“They did. Which leads to my next question. How did they know? The FBI doesn’t issue press releases, and the names of its agents and their job titles aren’t posted on its website. I know because I tried to look you up.”
“They must have found out through some other channel.”
“What channel? Let me show you something.”
He took out his cell phone and got on the internet. Opening the Google app, he typed in “Special Agent Elizabeth Daniels FBI” and hit “Enter.” A page of links appeared on the screen, and he clicked on the first one. It was the story from the Boston Globe of Daniels and her team busting a child-trafficking ring and included her photograph and job title. It was the same story that had led him to finding her.
“If you go on the internet and type in your name and the word ‘FBI,’ this is the oldest story that pops up,” he said. “This bust in Boston took place three years after you got promoted. The information about your promotion wasn’t available for public consumption. Yet our killers somehow knew. They knew the day you were promoted, which led them to abduct and kill their first victim.”
She took a deep breath. “I admit, it’s a strange coincidence, but it still doesn’t prove anything.”
“There’s more.”
“Lay it on me.”
He pointed at the next line on the page. It said FUNDING. “You told me something interesting yesterday that I didn’t know. You said that every six months, the FBI reviews its active investigations and decides which should be continued and which should be put on the back burner. These investigations are also reviewed by the Justice Department. If an investigation has stalled, the funding usually stops.”
“Correct,” she said. “My bosses prioritize investigations based upon forward progress. If there isn’t any, the money dries up.”
“You also said that for the past seven years, your investigation into the Hanover killers has hit a wall every six months, and that you were just about ready to lose funding when another envelope of photographs landed on your desk, which led to the investigation being continued.”
“Correct again. The photos usually showed up a week or two before the review process would begin.”
“How many times did this happen?”
“Fourteen. If the killers hold true to form, the bureau will receive a new envelope of photos from a pharmacy in Fort Lauderdale in the next week or so.”
“That can’t be a coincidence.”
She shook her head, not understanding.
“The photographs showing up every six months was a ploy by the killers to keep your investigation going so they could torture you.”
“Where’s your proof?”
“My proof is that it worked, and it did torture you.”
“But how would they know about the review process?”
“I asked myself the same question. How could the killers know about the review process or how funding worked in the FBI? I did an exhaustive search on the internet and couldn’t find a single mention of it anywhere. The information simply isn’t available.”
“So how did they know?”
“They work for the bureau as field agents. Or I should say ‘worked.’ I’m pretty sure they’re semiretired now.”
Daniels rocked back on the couch and gave him a condescending look. “That’s ridiculous, Jon. The vetting process to become an FBI agent includes a battery of psychological exams that are meant to weed out people with mental disorders, which our killers certainly have. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“No, I’m not. And I can prove it.”
“You can prove these are FBI agents?”
“Yes. You may even know them.”
Her expression bordered on hostile. She had become blinded to the clues. It happened to even the best investigators when they spent too long working a case.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Eighteen months before the killings at Dartmouth, two girls were kidnapped and murdered in Bedford, New Hampshire, which isn’t that far from Dartmouth,” he said. “There were a number of similarities between those killings and the Dartmouth killings. The victims were teenagers who were abducted coming home from work. Their bodies were also dumped in fields.”
“I’m well aware of the Bedford murders and the parallels to the Dartmouth killings,” she said. “On their face, they appeared to have been committed by the same killers. Only that couldn’t have happened, because the man responsible for the Bedford killings was a house painter named Clyde Bessemer, and he was caught before the Dartmouth killings started. He’s serving a life sentence.”
“I know,” he said. “I read it online.”
“Then what’s your point?”
Lancaster reached into his shirt pocket and removed a square of paper, which he carefully unfolded. It was a twenty-two-year-old newspaper article from the Bedford Bulletin that he’d printed off the internet on the laser printer in his study. Its headline screamed BEDFORD MURDERS SOLVED! KILLER CAPTURED. Beneath the headline was a mug shot of a man in his forties with a handlebar mustache and the hardened eyes of a killer. The caption identified him as Clyde Bessemer of Bedford.
“This article from the Bedford Bulletin said that a pair of FBI agents broke the case,” he said. “Their names were Special Agents Don Mates and Troy Holloway, and they worked as field agents out of the FBI’s Bedford field office. These two guys are your killers.”
“That’s utterly ridiculous,” she said.
“No, it’s not. Their office was an hour-and-ten-minute drive from Dartmouth. As field agents, they could come and go as they pleased and not arouse suspicion. They used the Bedford killings as a blueprint for the Dartmouth killings. After your escape, they decided to rein it in. Then you were promoted to run the Violent Crimes Against Children unit, which I’m guessing was announced internally. Is that right?”
“It was announced on the FBI’s intranet, which is only available to staff,” she said.
“That explains it. Seeing that you were promoted infuriated Mates and Holloway. You were the one that got away. So they decided to pay you back.”
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she asked.
“No, I just think you missed them.”
“The FBI didn’t miss Mates and Holloway, and neither did I,
” she said, unable to hide the indignation in her voice. “The bureau recognized that there were parallels between the Bedford killings and the Dartmouth killings right away. Two agents that worked the Dartmouth case interviewed Mates and Holloway to see if they could shed any light on who the killers might be. It didn’t lead to anything.”
“Mates and Holloway had time to get their stories down and fooled your agents during the interview.”
“Be quiet and let me finish. When I graduated from the academy, I got my hands on the interview with Mates and Holloway, and I studied it. There was nothing there. But I still wanted to look them in the face, and make sure they weren’t the killers. If either one of them had a discolored right eye, I’d know it was them.”
“Your gut was telling you something.”
“Would you please let me finish? I couldn’t just demand an interview since they’d already been cleared. So I bided my time. Three years after my promotion, my team busted a child-trafficking ring working out of Boston. When the bust was over, I decided to take my shot, and I called Mates and told him I was in the area, and would he and Holloway be willing to meet with me? I explained that I’d gotten a firsthand look at the Dartmouth killers, and was hoping it might jar a memory or two. Mates was pleasant over the phone and said he’d talk to Holloway. He called me back an hour later, and said yes. So I drove up to Bedford.”
“You actually met with them. Wow.”
“Are you insinuating that I made a mistake?”
“They could have killed you.”
“Damn it, Jon, it’s not Mates and Holloway. They took me out to lunch to a really nice place, and we sat at a corner booth and discussed the two cases. I was as close to them as I am to you right now. Neither Mates nor Holloway has a discolored eye.”
“Mates has a discolored eye. He got injured playing lacrosse in high school.”
Daniels acted like she might slap him. “Haven’t you heard a word I just said? It’s not them.”
“You’re wrong. It is them. Mates either had surgery to fix his eye, or he’s now wearing contact lenses that hide the discoloration. He probably did this right after you escaped from him and Holloway in the woods in Dartmouth.”
“You think they fooled me?”
“Afraid so.”
“Prove it.”
He again used his cell phone to get on the internet. Earlier, he’d found Mates’s Facebook page, and learned that the special agent had grown up in the town of Montague in western Massachusetts. Working off the assumption that Mates had attended the local high school, he’d done a yearbook search using a site called e-Yearbook, which he’d used before to hunt down suspects. It had taken a while, but he’d eventually found Don Mates’s photograph and profile in the class of 1988’s yearbook. Mates had been captain of the lacrosse team in his senior year, and Lancaster now pulled the team photo up, and used his thumb and forefinger to enlarge it. He passed the cell phone to her.
“That’s the Montague lacrosse team circa 1988. Mates was the team captain. He’s standing in the front row on the very left. Look at his right eye.”
She raised the phone to her face. “He’s wearing an eye patch.”
“If you read the posts, his teammates mention him getting hurt during the final game of the year. Mates took a stick in the eye.”
“That still doesn’t prove anything.”
“There’s more.”
He took the cell phone and pulled up Mates’s graduation photograph. He put the cell phone in front of her face. In the photo, Mates’s right eye was scarred, the discoloration rectangular-shaped in the lower part of the iris.
“Is that the bad eye you saw?” he asked.
Her hand came up to her mouth. “Oh my God.”
Her face was pale, and she was at a loss for words. She’d looked the murderous bastards right in the eye and not recognized them. It was going to haunt her, and he hoped she was strong enough to recover from it.
“I found Mates’s and Holloway’s Facebook pages and searched the postings. Mates relocated to Fort Lauderdale eight years ago, while Holloway followed a month later. They must work out of one of the FBI’s Miami offices.”
“Do you think they’re a couple? The FBI has an open policy on gays, lesbians, and bisexuals becoming agents, so it wouldn’t be unusual.”
“I think they’re both straight. A coworker at the Bedford office posted a photo from Mates’s going-away party. There was a hand-painted sign that said TO THE LAST CONFIRMED BACHELOR. I think Mates and Holloway are serial killers who realized they were less likely to get caught if they stuck together. I found their address on the DMV database. They share a house in an area called Sistrunk. It’s a slum.”
“They live in a slum?”
“They’re not the first serial killers who’ve done that. Your neighbors are less likely to bother you in a bad neighborhood. We need to take a ride over there and case the place. If my hunch is correct, they’re holding a girl there now.”
“What are you basing that on? Because I’m expecting a new set of photos? If we show up and start snooping around, they’ll get suspicious and get rid of any incriminating evidence. We need to handle this by the book.”
“There’s no time for that. We need to move fast.”
“Why? What did you find?”
“The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children keeps a database of all children that are reported missing. I have access through Team Adam, and reviewed the most recent cases. One stuck out. An eighteen-year-old girl named Ryean Bartell was reported missing yesterday. Ryean works as a server at the Jamba Juice in the Coral Ridge Mall. When she didn’t show up to work, her manager contacted the sheriff.”
“She’s only been gone a day. How can you be sure it’s an abduction?”
“Yesterday was payday. The manager thought it was strange that Ryean didn’t come in to collect her paycheck, so she called Ryean’s roommate to see if there was a problem. The roommate said that Ryean didn’t come home the night before and had disappeared.” He paused and then said, “She fits the profiles of the other victims. Mates and Holloway abducted Ryean after she got off work two nights ago, and took her to their house in Sistrunk. They’re going to go through their ritual, then kill her and snap photos and drop them off at a local pharmacy so they can keep torturing you. Or, we can stop them.”
He rose from the couch and pulled out his car keys.
“Come on. Maybe we’ll get lucky and save some poor girl’s life,” he said.
CHAPTER 39
SISTRUNK
Broward County was a vast place, with two million inhabitants spread across 1,320 square miles and thirty vastly different communities. Of those neighborhoods, none was more dangerous than Sistrunk, in the central part of the county.
Sistrunk was a slum filled with crack dens, Section Eight housing, and badass drug dealers staking out their turf on every corner. Of the cops that Lancaster had worked with, he did not know a single one that would answer a distress call from there at night.
The address showing on the DMV site for Mates and Holloway was on NW Ninth Street in an area called Washington Park. Northwest Ninth was a four-lane road with residences taking up one side and a line of businesses on the other. The most prominent was a Fast Stop Food Store that also sold hard liquor and lottery tickets.
It was late morning when they grabbed coffee from McDonald’s and sipped it while sitting in the Fast Stop’s lot. They were both running on fumes and knew that a jolt of coffee would trick their bodies into staying alert for a few more hours. They had a clear view of their suspects’ residence, a one-story concrete-block house with iron bars on the windows and a fenced-in yard. It was a depressing place with equally depressing neighbors.
“This is a rat hole,” Daniels said. “Are you sure it’s the right address?”
“This is the place,” he said. “Let’s wait and see if anybody’s home.”
“Why would they live here? It’s dangerous.”
&
nbsp; “It is dangerous,” he admitted. “But it also offers them protection. Team Adam did a study of abductors who held their victims for extended periods. This included Jaycee Dugard, Elizabeth Smart, and the three women held in a house in Cleveland—Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus. The study concluded that these women’s abductors had chosen to live in economically depressed communities because people who lived in those areas often have criminal records. Neighbors won’t call the police if they see suspicious activity because they don’t trust the police.”
“You’re saying the neighbors know something bad is going on inside the house, but don’t want to get involved.”
“That’s right. Jaycee Dugard was a good example. Her abductor kept her imprisoned in a tent behind his house for eighteen years. The neighbors on either side could clearly see Jaycee, and the two children she had by her abductor, but they never raised a stink or called the police.”
“Do you think Mates and Holloway’s neighbors know what they’re up to?”
“I’m sure they’ve had their suspicions. Mates and Holloway have been abducting and murdering young girls for over seven years. Someone must have heard something.”
“The FBI received the first photos from Houston and the second set from Atlanta. How do you explain that?”
“I think they did that to throw the FBI off the scent. They flew to Houston and Atlanta for a long weekend, killed the girls in a rented house, took photographs of them with their camera, and dropped the film off at a Walgreens to be developed. Miami is their home base.”
“That’s a lot of work, don’t you think?”
He turned in his seat and stared at her.
“It worked, didn’t it?” he said.
They finished their drinks in silence. Movement on the other side of the street caught his eye.
“Looks like we’ve got some activity,” he said.
A pair of binoculars lay in Daniels’s lap. She lifted them to her face and had a look. “I see a white male wearing cargo pants and a sleeveless T-shirt coming out the front door. He’s walking down the front path.”